The Internet and other technologies have enabled low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, effort and skills. As a result, collaborative work involving the sharing of ideas, knowledge, effort and skills has become easier. Groups of individuals can be formed from individuals desiring to collaborate and results of collaborative efforts can be communicated and tested among the individuals over a network.
Collaboration in terms of computing technology may broadly encompass tools that enable groups of individuals to work together in formats such as social networking, instant messaging, team spaces, web sharing, audio conferencing, video, telephony and so forth. In other words, collaboration may be implemented in a variety of different contexts or applications which may have varying degrees of complexity. Technology that facilitates linking of two or more individuals together to enable the individuals to work together may generally be considered collaborative. Collaborative tools and strategies have been developed by enterprises and others to allow employees, customers and partners to connect and interact in improved and efficient ways.
As non-limiting examples, some collaboration tools facilitate document production, staff networking, expert recommendations, information sharing, expertise location, peer feedback, real-time video or audio conferences and so forth. Collaboration may be performed asynchronously and/or synchronously to facilitate web conferencing, IP (Internet Protocol) telephony, instant messaging, rich video interaction and so forth.
Reference will now be made to the exemplary embodiments illustrated, and specific language will be used herein to describe the same. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the invention is thereby intended.